Sunday
Mar222015
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Greens suspend Viv
Mar 22, 2015 Greens Vivienne Westwood has been suspended by the Green Party, say the Telegraph this morning. Not, it seems, because of her promotion of assaults of academics but because of her - rather hypocritical but considerably less blameworthy - tendency to tax avoidance.
O tempora! O mores!
Reader Comments (30)
It is difficult to imagine anything more arrogantly stupid but oblarny succeeds where others fear to tread. (I thought it waranted a mixed metaphore)
Have they given back her £300,000 or transferred it directly to HMRC, I wonder?
"O tempora! O mores!", one of my father's favourite sayings. Anybody else remember Flanders and Swann:
In a way this is a pity, since her incoherent and simply ignorant views on the environment in mainstream political shows such as the Daily Politics and QT must have done her cause much harm. It will be interesting if this gets a mention today - probably not.
Suspended, eh?
I think we ought to start a petition for her. Have it delivered by a tank to somewhere in Islington...
dodgy, what size septic tank would that be?
My proposal for Change.org, should anyone wish to create a petition. We could see if it got into double figures...!
...................................................
"Please Reinstate Vivienne Westwood into the Green Party"
Vivienne Westwood is a perfect example of Green intellectual leadership. She lives off a fashion empire, and so has all the skills and facilities needed to keep her name in front of the press.
It is equally essential for the Green party to maintain continuous supportive press coverage, so boths sides gain immeasurably from this relationship. Please do not spoil it by losing an important Guardian writer...
Not surprised me. We live in an age of false perception and manufactured political piety. It's a grimm fairytale world and the BBC is too stupid these days to not play along.
Involved with the Young Growns at 74?
I can't believe that someone with an OBE and supporter of the Grown Party would stood so low.
Say it ain't so Viv, say it ain't so.
All arrogant tossers get found out in the end.
Had she "donated" money to some of these more radical groups, promoting assaults on academics, as some form of tax avoidance scheme aswell?
Westwood's concept of value for money, for other people, seems to involve selling them short term fashion statements, for inflated prices, so the money that was in their pockets, ends up in her pockets. What a nasty, ruthless capitalist she is, exploiting the gullible.
Remind me again why the Greens think she is dodgy? They seemed a perfect match.
Can we suspend Prince Chuckles, 26 people in a hired Jet touring the USA. Must have the carbon footprint of a small banana Duchy .
It seems she hasn't been suspended from the Party, but merely dropped from a university speaking tour. The Green Party has got their tax experts on the case.
For more on Vivienne's winning campaign ways, see
https://geoffchambers.wordpress.com/2013/10/18/carry-on-up-the-amazon/
As I understand it, tax avoidance is legal. For some reason it has recently become another rallying cry for the faux outrage that organisations such as the greens exist on.
Tax evasion is illegal however and should be prosecuted when evidence of it is uncovered.
So, when it comes to voting, remember that you to could be deemed guilty the whim of some uninformed and malevolent plonker.
It is a bit rough to ask someone who wastes taxes to actually pay some tax.
To be fair to Westwood, she did nothing not done by many celebrate 'greens' , indeed the Guardains owners, the Scott trust ,use a similar approach to 'manage ' their tax regime .
Oddly not one of the Guardains many articles attacking others for the same thing and not one of the many journalists who have written have even mentioned this , let alone challenged this .
If anyone feels like wasting some time you could write and ask the new editor if this will carry-on being the case.
So we can say that being inconsistent , is a consistent feature of people like Westwood and those who share a similar ideology, Bono !
The reason you have tax avoidance and tax evasion is that you have so much complexity.
Chancellors cannot resist (sometimes for the best of motives and sometimes even for the best of reasons!) tinkering with the system and governments in general cannot resist using fiscal methods to ensure that they attract businesses to their countries.
And instead of simplifying the system and putting everyone on the same footing for payment of tax all that happens is that the Treasury stops up whatever loophole the media or the Leader of the Opposition is currently whingeing about and the tax advisers go and create another one.
The cost to the taxpayer of the bureaucratic effort (on both sides of that divide) must be enormous!
The unbelievable defrocked by the unspeakable.
Or should that be the other way around?
Mar 22, 2015 at 9:41 AM |Phillip Bratby
I see someone can come up with a quote at the drop of a(nother) hat.
Perhaps it is superficial, but for some reason I would think the "Green Youth Movement" would have a Poster Child with less pronounced jowls than 71 year old Dame Vivienne.
Hang on, is she the one that makes the T-shirts for the UK Feminists in Asian sweat shops?
Far too much Colombian marching powder and interesting cigarettes....and most unfortunately what few brain cells she possessed have been disconnected. Hanging on to the coattails of some nefarious 'rebellious youf' music phenomenon and a desperate need by a bunch of gormlessly stupid people [left wing chatterati] to raise clay pots up to be false Gods So what, she's a name for some reason, the rest of it sums up women's haute couture - like modern art and the Emperor's new clothes - there's nothing to 'em
@ssat, yes she is only carrying out tax avoidance, not evasion, but that doesn't stop us laying into her and the Greens. They conflate avoidance and evasion in their attacks on capitalists so its just right and proper that we use their own tactics back on them.
Anybody else notice that the Greens are decidedly lacking in ethnic minority members?
Jeremy Poynton: perhaps they have more nous about them than the local-grown idiots.
Maybe she could design a new outrageous prisoners little number if she has to do some time
@PaulinSweden
...Perhaps it is superficial, but for some reason I would think the "Green Youth Movement" would have a Poster Child with less pronounced jowls...
Pretty much all feminists seem to be ugly, and the ones that are not go out of their way to look unattractive. It seems to be a requirement...
There was me hoping it was for travelling to Green Party sponsored events in a diesel S Class Mercedes limousine - ho-hum.
Remind me, where would the World be without the high fashion produced by Viv and her ilk?
So is passive tax avoidance just as bad? How about secondary tax avoidance? I think we should be told!